Two Linear Passes Are Necessary for Sum-Exclude-Self Under Sublinear Space
Data Structures and Algorithms
2026-04-02 v1
Abstract
We prove that any algorithm computing the sum-exclude-self of an unsigned -bit integer array of length under sublinear space must perform two linear passes over the input. More precisely, the algorithm must read at least input elements before any output cell receives its final value, and at least additional elements thereafter, where bits is the working memory size. This gives a total of element reads. A trivial modification of the standard two-pass algorithm achieves this bound exactly for all practical input sizes. The proof uses this toy problem as a worked example to demonstrate the choke-point technique for proving sublinear-space lower bounds.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2604.01012,
title = {Two Linear Passes Are Necessary for Sum-Exclude-Self Under Sublinear Space},
author = {Andrew Au},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2604.01012},
year = {2026}
}